The World Premiere of The Sends will be held 2009.09.05 19:00 at the 330 seat SF Bio, Dieselverkstaden, Sickla, Stockholm. After party and music will follow the premiere at Dieselverkstaden.
Entrance is FREE, thanks to Tielma Productions, Marmot, Mad Rock and Klätterverket, get your tickets at Stockholm's climbing gyms and finer climbing stores while they last!
Showing posts with label Climbing DVDs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Climbing DVDs. Show all posts
The Sends Outtakes
Watch a 14 minute Outtake segment from The Sends at http://www.tielma.com/thesends.html
Pre-order The Sends DVD before 2009.09.01 for just 195 SEK (19.50 EUR). The DVD will ship the day of it's release, 2009.10.10.
Pre-order The Sends DVD before 2009.09.01 for just 195 SEK (19.50 EUR). The DVD will ship the day of it's release, 2009.10.10.
Herakleia Reviewed
I wasn't quite sure why Sercan kept trying to convince me to take a trip to Turkey to check out this mountain full of boulders, especially, considering he'd just been there with Mike Call to film Herakleia...The concept is solid, right? Take your friends climbing to some beautiful location, bring some cameras along and “Man, let’s make a movie!” Well, Mike Call has been doing this longer than just about everybody else, so here we go, “Hueco Plus”.
I remember taking a GR course a few years back, that’s General Relativity in case you’re wondering, and there was this guy sitting next to me trying to work out the tensors and no, not the type you use on your knee. Anyway, he was about 50, but easily 40, and I’m thinking “Man, if you don’t have an idea what it’s all about by now, you never will.” It’s just that, by the time you’ve got a handle on how to figure it out you’ve figured it out. Isn’t that the beauty of solving a boulder? So you look at yourself and you hope that in 25 years you’re just a bit further down the road, that your travels have led you just a bit further.
Maybe I digress, but I was left with that sinking sensation that the prom king was now living in a trailer. Back in the day Boone was the man, and while it still works for Josh, just because Sharma’s still cutting it, literally, some dogs have had their day. To quote a genius, “Do the evolution…”
It’s the lack of progression that comes through most evidently in Herakleia, the feeling that the collage kid never moved on, he just got slower.
Nonetheless, the Herakleia area looks fantastic. But seriously, with all that rock, what more motivation do you need? Or to put it this way, if my buddy pulls on a pair of headphones the next time he tries to send we’re probably looking for different experiences. I can understand why Sercan wanted a 2nd go at it, and while it looks like a fantastic area, when I go I’ll take my shoes instead of a camera, because as Herakleia is evidence you can’t take both and succeed…
Committed II Reviewed
Climbing, in it's purest form is about embracing the unknown. It's unclear if this has been realized on the British Isles. That was my preconception before watching yet another headpointing film, Committed II, and this time in series format, no less.Well, the mostly unknown. You know it, but you don’t, sort of.... Get it? Apparently, there are some subtleties to climbing and Dave and Paul of Hot Aches are meticulous in portraying the essence of a climb and the whole mystical journey a climber goes through as their life flashes before their shoddy gear a rather long way below them. The old adage of “DON’T FALL” is well alive and kicking in Britain.
It’s those very subtleties that keep popping up that’s the genius of Committed II. One moment you're watching Tony af Siurana talking about the beauty of Dave McCloud’s climbing and the next thing you know the Scot is down climbing PERFECTLY good bolts, five of them, in fact, just because he’s so versed in the fine school of hard British trad. It is a well known fact that the Brits wore long johns in Hawaii, because that’s what the military code said their attire should be. I digress, but may one day clearer heads prevail…
Anyway, somehow this all fits together and you’re left wondering why that woman belaying Dave doesn’t look at all like Claire. Sure enough the boys at Hot Aches have enough wit to take an occasional poke at classics like E11. This time it’s James Pearson in the closet and his girl seems to be so used to it that after putting her bike helmet away she promptly closes the door on him. Nonetheless, they do have a real talent for telling the story of a single climb. Throughout the film, and it takes the better portion of an evening, you get to see a handful of climbs, but the climbs and the characters invite you into their relatively sketchy world and hold you there, enthralled. That said, I have no immediate plans to go climbing in Britain, I’ll ask Tony just how many bolts he thinks it’s alright to pre-clip long before it comes to that.
But back to the subtleties, the presence of Dave weighs heavily on the film. Dave is the polished kind, almost like a scaled up version of our beloved Wulfie, and as such, we are forced to revisit Rhapsody. This time with Steve McClure, and he’s climbing on preplaced gear and talking about how it’s a really safe route and if it were at all scary he wouldn’t be there. Then he takes a 40 footer. Talk about fodder for the E-debate and how about that for subtlety? Hats off…
About now I should warn you that if you’ve a stateside adrenaline junkie, sit down, shift gears and give it a try, we all know variation is the spice of life. Right? Right, that’s the Walk of Life and it’s just stunning, and it’s a long, long way down and the striations all face the wrong way and I’m not even going to mention the grade or the ethics behind it, it’s simply stunning. It’s climbing that keeps you honest and James comes across as exactly that and then it starts raining….
It’s not often that a film lives up to the marketing behind it but Committed II is in fact five fantastic climbing stories. It’s weaknesses only enhances it’s strengths and leaves me wondering if for all that’s lacking in the British game that they might just hold a subtle key to what the essence of climbing is.
The Committed II DVD is available from http://www.tielma.com/ for 295 kr.
The Sharp End Reviewed
There aren’t a lot of climbing films that I watch the day I receive them, generally I like to sit down with friends to see the latest adventure and sometimes they arrive in the middle of the week. But not this time, I had high expectations and every intention of watching the Sharp End as soon as I had it in hand.The ante in the climbing film genre has definitely been raised, though without doubt, it will fan the flames of peoples’ preconceptions of climbing. The Sharp End captures in detail, the perception of how non climbers view climbing; dangerous, on the edge of the void. This is simply a different realm of climbing. It’s not a film that gets your palms sweaty, that happens when you can relate to what you’re watching, in the spirit of good porn. Instead, for an hour your heart gets to pump considerably faster as you are immersed in riskier and riskier climbing, or?
Well, at least the stakes get higher, that is, the level of control the climbers display increases with the magnitude of the ascent. You are not left, as climbing films tend to, with the feeling that you too could do this, unless you are already familiar with the possibility of certain death. In that sense, this film reaches to a much larger audience, beyond just climbers and to adrenaline junkies of all varieties. It’s this cross over that Peter Mortimer executes flawlessly as he guides you from one rush to the next with the stakes increasing at each step. How else do you relate to pulling your b.a.s.e rig after a botched free solo? Or the soloist calmly recounting that before this paradigm shift a mistake meant death while now it means flying.
The Sharp End definitely lives up to it’s name in a broad sweep of vibrant characters living on the edge yet it only alludes to the secret of thrill seekers of all stripes, the search for that infinitesimal moment of clarity, focus, stillness. Instead, you are repeatedly brought back from the edge by the voice of a jacked up American thrill seeker. Dude, the visual magnitude belies the need for any SoCal connotations. That said, it’s unlikely that the Sharp End will inspire, that requires a desire to emulate. However, it will amaze and sets a new standard for climbing films.
The Sharp End DVD is available from http://www.tielma.com/ for 295 kr.
The Sharp End definitely lives up to it’s name in a broad sweep of vibrant characters living on the edge yet it only alludes to the secret of thrill seekers of all stripes, the search for that infinitesimal moment of clarity, focus, stillness. Instead, you are repeatedly brought back from the edge by the voice of a jacked up American thrill seeker. Dude, the visual magnitude belies the need for any SoCal connotations. That said, it’s unlikely that the Sharp End will inspire, that requires a desire to emulate. However, it will amaze and sets a new standard for climbing films.
The Sharp End DVD is available from http://www.tielma.com/ for 295 kr.
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